Well, swapped the pads out. The pads are warped slightly under the heat and the pad material seems pretty crumbly round the edges. Pushed the pistons back in and reset them with a couple of pumps of the lever and it all seems fine.

on my descent of Malham, I told my wife to feather the brake the whole way down (it was raining, I didn't want her to try and pull an emergency stop with wet rotors.)
by the time she was at the bottom you could hear the hissing as the rain hit the rotor, the bazar things is the hissing went on for a couple of minutes!

mtmiller its the correct mount, so I'm guessing it should be like that. Had a compare to my Giant Reign and looks similar (Tech M4's on that)

keener This is the best I have at the moment... Fork functions quite well, rebound is a bit quick for my liking- but needs adjustment still to fine tune. Anti dive linkage is brilliant, fork still operates normally for bump compliance but slam the brake on and no dive.

Hmmm

Originally Posted by ratty2k

mtmiller its the correct mount, so I'm guessing it should be like that. Had a compare to my Giant Reign and looks similar (Tech M4's on that)

Hmmm... something is strange. You're inner ~20% of the pad is seeing very little rotor and the brakes would see more swept area of the rotor if the caliper was spaced out a few mms. Maybe the heat situation would be better as well.

When setting up brakes, I like to use a Sharpy (any marker will do) and make a line across the braking surface on the rotor. Then I put some light pressure on the brake lever and rotate the wheel a bit, dragging the Sharpy line thru the pads. The pads will erase the line where the pads are traveling. I tried to get the pads square and centered. With all the different sizes of rotors and adapters etc. out there, even when things should be correct, I've had to do some creative filing and spacing to get things right.

Long twisty road descent, I aint light either.... Musta been up at around 40 ish mph and hard application of what is an underpowered brake anyway soon gets 'em warm. Its a familiar smell to those that ride with me- scorched brakes! Not always to this degree tho I must admit!

Try the sintered pads

Originally Posted by ratty2k

Long twisty road descent, I aint light either.... Musta been up at around 40 ish mph and hard application of what is an underpowered brake anyway soon gets 'em warm. Its a familiar smell to those that ride with me- scorched brakes! Not always to this degree tho I must admit!

I was doing great with my mono minis until I wore the pads out and replaced them with organic pads of various kinds. I put some Hope sintered pads in there, and the problems with overheating pretty much went away. I mean, they are a weight weenie xc racerboy kinda brake, so don't expect miracles. Also, Hope uses copper backs on their pads to get rid of heat. I found many aftermarket pads used steel backs, sometimes painted steel, and the paint will keep them from getting rid of heat.

BTW, I'm 200# and ride 160mm rotors. I was overheating them only on long sustained descents, Like the kinds that drop 500 feet in a short run.

sintered, dont run anything else. Where we do most riding is very grritty and wwe have gone through pads in 15/20 miles if you ont run sintered. Although I do think bedding 'em in makes a huge difference to that as well....

Seems to me like the brake is doing what it should. There's a clear rider technique problem. The only other explanation is a brake mismatched for the conditions in an effort to go light. I rode minis on my 35 pound bike, using a 180 and 160 in the rear, huge, long descents, dragging and I couldn't even come close to that.

As far as the spacing goes, it looks correct. There's a bit of the inboard that does not touch the rotor uniformly on purpose. It's a different way to get the same principle as the "wavy" rotors. Air gets channeled through portions of the pad during braking. However, the saw blade rotors maintain more constant overall surface areas than the previous round ones before where the brake track actually widened and narrowed. The tips of the rotor aren't as blued because of their exposure to air.

My opinion is if the op did that, he likely would have done that on any brake. Warping pads, bluing rotors, complaining about power, all signs that the rider is using poor technique and over-working the brake.

Ok, so on a 1in 4 maybe 1 in 5 descent on road, twisty and long 2-3 miles how would you use the brake? Never done it on any of the roacky descents that make up my normal riding. Just a case of when I get to 35 mph upwards I want to slow down- the brakes aint that powerfull, have had Avids with more power and the Tech M4's on my Reign stop me just fine different terrain and different use tho.

Don't you ever let the lever up for even a second just to allow some cooling air to get past the rotor and pads?

I'm speaking from my experience with the Minis. I have done several miles of descent on them, kept in mind they are XC brakes, no matter what rotor was on, and I came nowhere close to that, even on 180's.

Then comes the ever-present comparison of Minis with brakes not in the same category. I held off from buying Minis for a long time because I saw reviews like that, then I realized how flawed they were. People were not realizing Hope makes dedicated brakes for applications. One can compare the Mini to a Magura Marta, and of course, no one would imagine doing such a thing to Magura because it's well known the Marta is a superlight XC brake, but the Mono Mini, yeah, it can be compared to DH brakes. It's silly.

If you're complaining about the brake, then you're either too heavy for it, and/or it's mismatched to you. For instance, you're running a 203 on it, which combined with other evidence in this thread, is indicating seriously to you being a combination of heavy or demanding too much braking, along with just dragging the brakes. You blued the rotors on a road, so I'm going to put it down that you're dragging the hell out of them, and with the 203, trying to turn them into a higher powered brake that you needed in the first place.

It's pretty obvious the brakes are being misused in some respect and possibly even outside of their design function.

lightly draging a brake continually gets a brake hotter than speeding up braking hard for a short time, speeding up, braking hard.

Hope brakes are amazing!
My dad uses the mini aswell, weigh about as much as you but due to flawless technique I still think he is on his first set of pads, 3-4 years, he also has smaller rotors.

He only every brakes when he needs to then brakes like he means it.

excellent tenchnique.

nowt wrong with the brakes, the rotors look cool and use them how you want to.
I am assuming the reason they don't overheat when offroad is you on-off the brakes more due to the terrain but drag them on a road.

Ok, so on a 1in 4 maybe 1 in 5 descent on road, twisty and long 2-3 miles how would you use the brake? Never done it on any of the roacky descents that make up my normal riding. Just a case of when I get to 35 mph upwards I want to slow down- the brakes aint that powerfull, have had Avids with more power and the Tech M4's on my Reign stop me just fine different terrain and different use tho.

"brakes arn't that powerful"

I missed that comment before, they are really really really powerful.
You should be able to tear your tyre of the rim if those brakes are set up correctly.

If your pads are sintered I would guess contaminated.
File them down a bit then put them on your hob and heat them until they stop smoking.
I would reccomend baking your rotors too, but I think you have already done that.

The only brakes I have ridden that are more powerful are Formula the Ones.